The Island Again
The season slid from Winter to the next, snowdrop and crocus to hawthorn blossom, the hum of bees, then pansy, rose, chrysanthemum. The whole happy gamut hardly vexed by touches of blight or failure in leaf or root. Gooseberry followed strawberry, the few we rear, on till we watched the blackberries appear, wild in the hedges. We were gorged on fruit making our last surveys of our estate before the snow. Oh, the longevity of the wild briars that never fade away, but bloom, bear fruit, shrink back slowly and wait.
Our lives seemed overtaken by one flower — night-scented stock was event after event so hugh and satisfying, a cloud of scent enveloping everyone at the front door, any old life, its irritations and pride, frozen, melted, raised up in a flower-smelling. The two of us at the dark door of our dwelling looking at nothing, that imminence outside. James Simmons
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